The present application is directed to a novel system for dispensing coupon packets and the like, on a one-at-a-time basis, from a vertical stack of such packets. In the processing of food coupons, or food stamps, as they are more popularly known, it is desirable to disburse the individual coupon packets or booklets, to the large numbers of clients receiving them at an extremely rapid rate, while at the same time, it is necessary to rigidly account for the packets being dispensed. Since such coupons are quasi-money, and the federal government spends literally billions of dollars every year on them, it is necessary that individual community offices, where these stamps are dispensed, have well managed accounting procedures.
It is the case, in many communities across the nation, that available accounting facilities have simply been overloaded, and it has not been possible to account for a large number of packets which have become "lost" in the system.